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In science one tries to tell people,
in such a way as to be understood by everyone,
something that no one ever knew before.
But in poetry, it's the exact opposite.
- Paul A. M. Dirac
British theoretical physicist and Nobel Prize winner
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'Try not to worry, just take it easy.’
That's just so easy for them to say.
‘Just relax, let your mind get some rest’
As if that would be possible for me to do.
I gingerly turn my head to the right, mindful not to reawaken the army of angry little dwarves hammering away inside my scull.
Of course, he doesn’t have a problem with ‘just relaxing’ and ‘shutting off his mind’. In fact, I’m hypothesizing it’s his ‘default state’. And like for every well established rule, there’s the occasional exception when he manages to catch me by surprise demonstrating he actually does turn it on once in a -very long- while. In science, the occasional anomaly is the most exhilerating part, since it heralds new discoveries. Like that slight subroutine malfuntioning Zelenka has found two days ago. I wonder how far he is on tracing the source of that. Probably came from the heating system, which has been malfunctioning for over a week, since they are both tied to the same mainframe. I should tell Zelenka to look into that possibilty, or –better yet- do it myself…
And that brings me back to my present condition, no doubt damaged a lot worse than the damned heating system, yet receiving far, far, fár less attention… Unlike him. By God, as if it is not enough torture to witness him hit on every space bimbo along the way, he just has to do the kicked puppy look to get all nurses swooning and crooning over him too. I guess the hair’s a major explanatory variable too. The tousled bed-hair look was hip in the milky way, and it seems Cosmopolitan’s influence even extends into a different galaxy. Well, I’ll have the last laugh when he runs out of hair gel…
But right now, he irrefutably has the advantage. He is ‘relaxing’, off to lalala-land, romancing all the women in the dream galaxy too or maybe flying, practicing the next neck-breaking stunt he’s going to let us suffer through the next time.
Amazing how he can be so peaceful when asleep, but manages to get himself in anything but peaceful situations when up and off-world. Well, even when staying in Atlantis, the injury-prone major has suffered statistically significant greater number of accidents than the rest of us combined. Damn, what is it with his foolish self-sacrificing attitude? It’s not a leader’s duty, at least not according to the 300-page thick pageturner the US army was so kind to provide me with after being promoted to head of the expedition’s science department. For a regulation book, it turned out to be quite useful actually. The paper’s quality is amazing for folding planes. Zelenka still holds the current record, but I’ve come up with a clever idea of crucially decreasing my planes’ aerodynamic resistance…
Ugh! Relax! Relax? How do they expect me to relax, when my science staff is probably giving more attention to folding the fastest paper plane than to maintaining –oh, I don’t know- the Atlantis heating system? Do they think any important work is going to be done by those blundering idiots without being closely supervised and promptly corrected by my superior intellect? I guess it’s a small miracle Atlantis hasn’t returned to Davy Jones locker in the one day I was unconscious…
I grimace as my near photographic memory unbiddenly shows flashes of yesterday’s disaster. It’s getting old really fast, you know, being chased by hostile natives, being captured when the damn gate chooses the worst possible moment to malfunction, finding an ingenious way of escaping the local loons, and an even more brilliant way of establishing a wormhole with only a near-ruined DHD while dodging hundreds of weapon’s blasts. Occuring less often, and therefore far more exciting (read: nerve-wracking), is having an invisible alien hitchhiker lifting with you to Atlantis, wreaking havoc with the mainframe and generally creating more mayhem than a category 5 hurricane.
Needless to say Sheppard just had to get himself beaten up, shot and knocked into a minor coma trying to prevent –as he calls it so fondly- ‘his geek’ from dying. Evidently, said geek eventually had to do the rescuing himself, not only by devising a plan so clever it would have Einstein die of envy, but also by executing the final, death-defying step himself because a certain Major is too weak to do anything but bleeding all over Atlantis. And while doing this -unfortunately and unavoidably- got himself banged up nicely, landing himself in the infirmary yet again…
All in a day’s work.
None of that to be seen in any of those bloody 300 pages (now only 200 left, I think, the rest being sacrificed in the quest to defy gravity) coming with the job description. Just so that they know it, I’m going to ask for a hefty raise in hazard pay when… no, if we ever get back to earth…
I sigh, and immediately berate myself severly for doing so. The blood in my lung veins just turned into liquid fire, leaving me gasping, which in turn only serves to increase the torture.
Deep breaths. Easy, deep breaths. Ouch, ouch, ouch! Okay, easy, shallow breaths. No whimpering, that’d only hurt more. Aaaaaah. Son of a b…, that hurts! Where are the good drugs when you need them? For that matter, where are the good doctors? Okay, rhetorical question, that last one.
Very gently, I turn my head the other way, thanking whatever deity watches over the Pegaus galaxy as the pain in my lungs slowly reaches a more bearable –but stil excruciating!- level.
And there he is, the only remotely capable medical professional, incapacitated because of his damn scottisch foolhardedness.
Didn’t I tell him loud and clear to stay put? No, our resident ‘Braveheart’ just had to dodge alien lightning blasts in order to reach the injured major. Honestly! If he had listened to me, and just waited one ‘wee’ minute, the entity would have been nicely evaporated by my brilliantly constructed device. But no, things never go the easy way in the Pegasus galaxy, and unexpectedly having to save stubborn Scotsmen tends to result in the regrettable side effect of permanently damaging to the only device capable of saving all our asses.
I still blame it on the adrenalin. Oh God, I’m going to have nightmares about this for ages to come. My brain must have been addled by those hits I took. Concussion, neuron’s firing erroneously, light-headed by the loss of several liters of blood, mens insana in coporis saucio…
I plead temporary insanity.
Damn, I swear it felt like someone else who ran full speed at a huge, lightning shooting, pissed off alien to demolecularize it by close –far too close and painful- contact rather than the planned, clean, sáfe remote way.
Makes you seriously wish you had retrograde amnesia…
None of this fond reminiscating is helping me rest however. Hell, my mind is never resting. Even when I sleep, which is a huge euphemism for whatever little shut-eye I manage to catch in between ‘major’ disasters (like scientists in dire need of a rehearsal of elementary calculus), Kavanaugh’s briljant ideas going awry (a category that tops previously mentioned major disasters) and the ‘real’ aka imminently lethal catatstrophes the Pegasus system failed to anounce in its holiday brochure… Anyway, even when I am finally allowed a cat-nap, my brain is subconcsciously processing information, usually resulting in me waking up suddenly with another brillliant idea. Even the headache from hell, which is slowly coming back now –damn dwarves-, can only marginally slow down the neuronal pulses shooting with lightning speed through my brain synapses.
All my life, people have told me I am excepitionally gifted. Bull! I used to tell myself it was more like being cursed. The glazed over eyes, the barely hidden yawns, the nervous looks, the disinterest, the jealousy, the rejection of other people, they had trapped me in my own world, which I shared only with the great, recognized –and therefore long deceased- geniuses, and a misanthropic cat. I will never admit this to a living soul, but deep down, I don’t want to be ‘special’. I never asked to be able to solve complex trigonometry in my first year of secondary school. I can’t help it that I found physics so ridiculously easy that I built a model of an atomic bom for the school science fair. I didn’t decide to to skip half of highschool to be one of the youngest ever to start university; I just loved exploring various topics of science and never intended to finish three PhDs along the way.
Through all my eduction, I expected only 1 little thing, a thing almost all children take for granted, but I never got to know: I just wanted my parents to be proud of me, hell, anyone to be proud of me, and I hoped that this might even make them love me. Foolish, yes, I finally realized that when no one, not even my socalled parents, visited me after I nearly died in a bus crash. One of the many disappointments in life, I guess. And with every disappointment, people became less and less important and knowledge ever more.
Until I met Samantha Carter.
There are no words fit to describe her completely. I won’t try to describe her. It may very well be the only thing I will never be capable of. I’m no poet, and she deserves better than Shakespeare, Byron or Keats.
But she was the first person in a long while to breach my carefully constructed shielding. She made the first crack. She touched my heart.
She may never know, but simply by coming into my life, she showed me that you can be a genius, and still be respected and loved. She is. My decision to sacrifice her friend the jaffa haunts me till this very day. It always will. And it will remind me to try to look past the scientific problem to see the people behind it.That there is more to life than reasoning and logic.
Her memory gave me the strength to walk into the energy being. The first time I ignored my squealing brain and really listened to my heart.
I know I’m not as strong as she is, and most of the walls I’ve painstakingly built and triply reinforced are still up. But, bits and pieces are slowly crumbling. Other people have touched my heart, maybe not as much as Sam, but then again, no one can compete with an angel, not even ascended Ancients.
There is Carson. I may call him a voodoo practitioner and highlander sheep-doctor, but I trust him with my life. Well, quite literally, although when it comes to thát I’m usually not cognizant enough at the time to realize it.
There is Elizabeth. Despite all my snarking, deep down, I appreciate her concern, not only for me but for every member of the expedition, and whatever well-willing aliens we pick up along the way. She’s one hell of a leader, and I will follow her whereever she goes. Not without bitching, complaining, whining and generally being annoying though. I have my principles too.
And then there is Sheppard. God, the man can be so annoying! The way he smiles his trademark carefree grin. The way he flutters around like an aimless butterfly when I’m trying to concentrate on some ancient device. Seriously, he must have one hell of a guardian angel not to be electrocuted, cut, burned, zapped and demolecularized more often by the artifacts he so fondly and carelessly toys with. Of course, he more than makes up for it by seeking the most inventive ways of nearly getting himself near-death experiences by his misplaced -a mile wide- heroic streak on missions. But he has a good credo, one I secretly try to hold high: ‘No one gets left behind.’ Whether that ‘one’ is a jaffa stuck in a stargate, or a certain injury-prone member of my team who incidentily happens to be my best friend.
Aaah, since when do I ever have these ‘fuzzy feelings’-like thoughts? It must be the damn fever talking. My brain is slowly starting to evaporate out of my ears. Litlle puffs of smoke. Dwarves imitating Native Americans and sending smoke signals to invite more hammer-happy peers…
Suddenly, Zelenka is looming over me, his hair sticking up as if he’s just been zapped by an alien lightning stroke, which he actually nearly was. I really need to send my staff to Sheppards class ‘ducking for dummies’, although the teacher isn’t exactly the prime example of perfection inpractice...
A radiant smile is splitting Zelenka’s face.
And I don’t ask him about the paper planes or the malfunctioning heating system.
All I manage past my parched throat is: "Lizzzbht?"
But he understands, and nods so enthousiastically and happily as if he’d just won the Nobel Price.
And I smile back, only a slight upward curving of the corners of my mouth, but Zelenka knows. He knowns this is what I needed the most. The thing that kept me from resting my mind. My eyes suddenly feel heavy and the hammering dwarves in my scull decide to slack off their work somewhat.
Zelenka’s hand briefly squeezes my unbandaged one, very gently, mindful of the IV line. "Go sleep, Rodney, all is well."
Yes, all is well now. Elizabeth has survived too. My family is alive and on the mend.
Now, I can relax, and if I am lucky, a certain blond-haired astrophysist may visit me in my dreams to tell me she’s proud of me…
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Disclaimer: I don't own anything. Stargate Atlantis, its characters and all related entities are the property of MGM/UA, Double Secret Productions, Gekko Productions and The SciFi Channel. Story created for entertainment purposes only. No copyright infringement is intended and no money is being made.